Agenda for Smart Mobility

World of Connections
November 14, 2018
Hawthorne

How do autonomous vehicles, shared transport, and intelligent networks change commute patterns and city landscapes? As the economics of product and service delivery are altered, which sectors benefit or are threatened?

Breakfast, registration, and welcome keynotes

8:00 a.m. to 10:40 a.m.

ROAD TO AUTONOMY

The road to full autonomy is long but smarter driving technology is constantly evolving with immediate benefits. What are the near and medium-term implications for AI and autonomy in transportation and logistics?

How Autonomous Technologies are Transforming Smart Mobility

How Autonomous Technologies are Transforming Logistics: Fleets are early adopters of autonomous technologies. An example from Peloton’s platooning system.

11:05 a.m. to 11:25 a.m.

VC Panel

A Venture View on Smart Mobility and Autonomous Driving: Where Smart Money is investing in Smart Mobility

Moderator: Tim Higgins
Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Ulrich Quay
Managing Director, BMW i Ventures

Chris Thomas
Co-Founder, Detroit Mobility Lab

Jim Scheinman
Founding Manager Partner, Maven Ventures

Mark Weiser
Founder and Managing Director, RPM Ventures

11:35 a.m. to 12:10 p.m.

Lunch

SMART MOBILITY AND SMART CITIES

A connected, autonomous world will transform our commute. Shared transport will produce denser, cleaner cities, and quicker, less expensive commutes. How will changes in commute options and patterns impact cities, businesses, and employees?

Shared Mobility: Promoting Smarter Commutes and Cities

New technology enabling shared transportation. How Lime is transforming our commutes and altering city landscapes.

Innovator View: Smart Parking

Exploring Different Transportation Models as a Service and the Rise of Multi-Modal Mobility

Which services prevail? How they augment each other and promote smarter cities?

Moderator: Alex Davies
Transportation Editor, WIRED Magazine

Greg Moran
CEO, Zoomcar

Toby Sun
CEO, Lime

Yona Shtern
CEO, Parkwhiz

Edwin Olson
CEO, May Mobility

2:10 p.m. to 2:40 p.m.

Networking Break

SMART LOGISTICS

Logistics has moved to center stage as omnichannel retail and costs are ballooning with manpower shortages. Smart Logistics promises to reduce costs, improve transparency, and shrink delivery windows. How will this impact the future business?

Smart Logistics: Ushering in the Concierge Economy

Smart logistics delivers a faster, lower cost service augmenting the types of services that can be affordably offered.

Keynote: Lior Ron
Head of Uber Freight, Uber

3:05 p.m. to 3:25 p.m.

Innovator View: Multi-modal Smart Logistics

Sanne Manders
Chief Operating Officer, Flexport

3:25 p.m. to 3:35 p.m.

Innovator View: Last Mile Logistics

How improved last mile logistics is altering consumer habits and rearchitecting the city landscape?

Idriss al Rifai
Founder and CEO, Fetchr

3:35 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.

Innovator View: Smart Logistics – a Global View

How an integrated view across the supply chain ensure a more seamless and reliable logistics system?

Lidia Yan
Co-Founder and CEO, NEXT Trucking

3:45 p.m. to 3:55 p.m.

Smart Logistics Panel

Exploring how Smart Logistics transforms service and product delivery in the near and longer term. Which technologies will have the greatest transformative impact?

Moderator: John G. Larkin
Managing Director, Stifel

Sune Stilling
Head of Growth, Maersk

Sanne Manders
Chief Operating Officer, Flexport

Idriss al Rifai
Founder and CEO, Fetchr

Lidia Yan
Co-Founder and CEO, NEXT Trucking

4:05 p.m. to 4:25 p.m.

Speakers on Smart Mobility

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Dragos Maciuca

Technical Director, Research and Innovation, Ford

Dragos Maciuca

Technical Director, Research and Innovation, Ford

Dragos Maciuca is the Technical Director and Senior Technical Leader at Ford's Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto.

He is an experienced engineer and management professional, with more than 15 years of professional experience in Silicon Valley spanning a breadth of industries including automotive (BMW and Nissan), consumer electronics (Apple), semiconductor manufacturing (KLA-Tencor), and aerospace (Lockheed Martin). He has extensive experience advising startups, developing and commercializing products, collaborating with universities, and leading cross-functional teams.

Dragos holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from the Haas School of Business.

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Lior Ron

Head of Uber Freight, Uber

Lior Ron

Head of Uber Freight, Uber

Lior Ron has been at the helm of some of the most exciting technological developments of the past decade. He began his career as the Chief Technology Officer for Israeli Army Intelligence before joining Google in 2007. There he became the product lead for Google Maps, helping to scale the business from 10 million to 1 billion users, as well as launch products including My Maps, Google Map Maker, and Google Local.

In 2016, Lior co-founded Otto, a self-driving truck company that was later acquired by Uber. Today, Lior is the Head of Uber Freight, Uber’s logistics on demand business, connecting shippers and trucking companies across the US.

Lime was founded in 2017 and has raised $335M from the last round, $467M in total. Lime is operating in over 70 markets and are serving millions of users.

Prior to LimeBike, Toby was the Investment Director with Fosun Kinzon Capital where he focused on consumer internet and IoT investments. Prior to Fosun, Toby was a senior consultant at Monitor Group and Deloitte Consulting's San Francisco Office. Toby has also worked at PepsiCo as a Product and Marketing Manager for many years, where he launched Gatorade in China and grew the business to market share leader in 11 months; he also led 7up business and managed $300M annual sales.

Toby holds an MBA from UC Berkeley-Haas where he served as the co-president of Asia Business Club.

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Ulrich Quay

Managing Partner, BMW i Ventures

Ulrich Quay

Managing Partner, BMW i Ventures

Ulrich has been Head of BMW i Ventures since July 2011. BMW i Ventures initially invested out of a EUR 100m commitment from its New York office in the areas of Mobility Services (e-mobility, navigation, parking, car sharing, and intermodal mobility solutions).

BMW i Ventures’ team of 10 investment professionals has invested in 33 portfolio companies. Ulrich is on the board of Chargepoint, Ridecell, Fair, Scoop, Caroobi, Shift, and an undisclosed enterprise software start-up.

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Sune Stilling

Head of Growth, Maersk

Sune Stilling

Head of Growth, Maersk

Sune Stilling was appointed head of Growth in January 2017. Following an early career in the IT industry, Sune joined the Maersk Group in 1999 as a trainee and has gained 17 years of experience within a broad spectrum of corporate disciplines in the group’s transportation, logistics, and energy divisions.

Sune has held MD/CEO and senior leadership roles focused on radical turnaround, transformation, divestment, and profitable growth in emerging-and developed markets across a number of regions and countries.

Prior to assuming the position as Head of Growth, Sune was the CEO of Egyptian Drilling Company (EDC), a leading joint stock oil field services company in the MENA region.

Sune holds a Graduate Diploma in Economics (HD/U) from Copenhagen Business School, an MA in Information and Communications Technology from AU, an MSc in Applied Finance from Singapore Management University (SMU) and an MBA (honors) from IMD.

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Sanne Manders

Chief Operating Officer, Flexport

Sanne Manders

Chief Operating Officer, Flexport

Sanne joined Flexport in 2014, soon after the company's start. As COO, he is responsible for operations, procurement, and carrier relations across all modes of transportation.

Before Flexport, he was at BCG, a global management consultancy, leading customer relations in logistics and supply chain practice.

He holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Delft University.

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Lidia Yan

Co-Founder and CEO, NEXT Trucking

Lidia Yan

Co-Founder and CEO, NEXT Trucking

Lidia Yan is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at NEXT Trucking, an ambitious Sequoia-backed startup that develops technology to address lack of capacity for the growing volume from global shippers and underutilization in the U.S. trucking industry.

Through NEXT Trucking, Lidia brings together her expertise in product development, marketing and operations. Her work with NEXT Trucking has earned her the Stevie Award for Startup of the Year. She was also named a finalist for both EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year and Los Angeles Business Journal’s Women Council and Awards.

Prior to NEXT Trucking, Lidia was a marketing executive at top 10 ecommerce retailer, Newegg. At Newegg, Lidia managed a $22 million marketing budget while keeping the cost of overall sales under one percent. Before Newegg, she founded 9luxe, a leading flash sale site in China. Lidia launched 9luxe without any venture funding, managed the distribution of over 40 luxury brands, and led the company to profitability within its first six months.

Lidia holds an M.A. in Communications from the University of Southern California. She grew up in Shanghai, China, and now calls Southern California home. When she isn’t busy managing her company and mentoring employees, Lidia enjoys relaxing at home with her husband, parents, and her three-year-old Border Collie, Toby.

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Joshua Switkes

CEO, Peloton

Joshua Switkes

CEO, Peloton

Joshua Switkes is Chief Executive Officer of Peloton Technology, bringing safety and efficiency to trucks through connectivity and automation.

He has been working on systems to make driving safer and more efficient for the last 15 years.

After his work at Stanford University on vehicle dynamics and control, Josh developed production control systems for Volkswagen, Audi, and Tula Technology.

He has brought together a world class team of engineers, investors, and advisors to bring groundbreaking safety and efficiency to trucking through the application of modern sensing, control and communications.

By augmenting the abilities of human drivers, Peloton is bringing these advanced solutions to today’s trucking operations.

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John Larkin

Managing Director, Stifel

John Larkin

Managing Director, Stifel

John Larkin joined Legg Mason (later sold to Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc.) in October 2001 to form and lead the firm’s entry into the transportation markets. Larkin led Stifel’s transportation and logistics research effort for 17 years.

In January of 2018, Larkin transitioned from Stifel’s Research Department to Stifel’s Investment Banking team. Over the years, Larkin has been recognized as an all-star analyst by Institutional Investor magazine numerous times, a Wall Street Journal All-Star analyst on several occasions, and has been awarded multiple Starmine stock picking and earnings estimate accuracy awards.

Previously, Larkin has served as: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of RailWorks Corporation, Managing Director with Alex, Brown and Sons' transportation team, AVP - Planning and Analysis at CSX Transportation, Inc., Systems Engineering Consultant with Day & Zimmermann, Inc., and a Research Associate at the Center for Transportation Research (at the University of Texas at Austin).

Larkin earned his MBA from Harvard University in 1984, a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1978, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Vermont in 1977.

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Idriss al Rifai

Founder and CEO, Fetchr

Idriss al Rifai

Founder and CEO, Fetchr

As Founder and CEO of Fetchr, Idriss Al Rifai leads one of the fastest growing start-ups in the Middle East. A firm believer in the power of technology, he has championed the introduction of disruptive innovations in traditional supply chain and logistics.

His goal is to solve the ‘no address’ problem in the GCC and other emerging markets, making delivery a seamless and hassle-free experience for customers. Under his leadership, Fetchr has grown 400% from 2014 to 2018 and has expanded services to 6 markets – UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Oman, and Jordan – with a launch imminent in Kuwait.

With ‘Customer First’ as one of the company’s cornerstone values, he has inspired his team of more than 3000 employees to work towards putting a smile on the customer’s face.
Despite facing numerous challenges when he first started Fetchr - from attracting and making clients think ahead of the curve, to making sure the product and software improved at the right pace as well as sourcing quality talent and fundraising, he has persevered and spearheaded the new age of revolution in Middle Eastern logistics.

Armed with determination and a clear long-term vision, Fetchr became the first Middle Eastern company to raise Series-A funding from a top Silicon Valley VC – New Enterprise Associates (NEA), the world’s largest Venture Capital fund – in 2015. Two years later, the company raised a Series-B funding of $41M led by both NEA and regional powerhouse, Majid Al Futtaim Group. Having secured funding from other famous names such as Nokia Growth Partners and Beco Capital, and been decorated with several awards, Idriss has made sure Fetchr remains a forerunner for Middle Eastern start-ups to grow and secure
capital from across the world.

Previously, Idriss headed operations for MarkaVIP, the then second largest e-commerce player in the MENA region, where he built an in-house logistics department for the company to expedite deliveries.

From 2002 to 2008, he worked with the French Ministry of Defence in various capacities and received several accolades for his leadership roles in Asia and Africa. He was part of the French U-19 National Basketball team from 1999 to 2003.

Idriss holds an MBA from the University of Chicago – Booth School of Business and a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). He is also a Rath and Fulbright scholar and an Endeavour entrepreneur.

He aspires to make addresses obsolete and empower the more than 2 billion people that live without structured addresses to receive anything, anywhere on the go.

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Greg Moran

Co-Founder and CEO, Zoomcar

Greg Moran

Co-Founder and CEO, Zoomcar

Greg has dedicated his entire career to sustainable development across the globe. Over the past six years, Greg worked in various financial, operational, and strategic roles within the international energy and infrastructure sectors. During this time, Greg was involved with projects on six continents, totaling over $12 billion. His primary focal areas within the sector included solar power, wind power, and energy storage. Greg previously held positions in investment banking, private equity, corporate business development, and energy policy formulation with Fieldstone Private Capital Group, Cerberus Capital, International Power, and the City of New York respectively.

Prior to co-founding Zoomcar with David Back, Greg studied at USC's Marshall School of Business, where he was the Founder and President of the USC Energy Club, Southern California's largest such club. Greg is also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds a degree in International Relations.

While he's not busy Zooming, Greg enjoys playing piano and hitting the golf links. He is also deeply passionate about competitive eating and he remains hopeful that someone will take him up on a dosa eating competition sometime soon.

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Yona Shtern

CEO, Parkwhiz

Yona Shtern

CEO, Parkwhiz

Yona is the Chief Executive Officer of ParkWhiz and an entrepreneur with an expertise in building and managing successful global brands in e-commerce, telecommunications, and fashion retail.

Prior to ParkWhiz, he was Co-Founder and CEO of Beyond the Rack, recognized as Consumer Brand of the Year in Canada by Strategy for 2014 and the fastest growing e-retailer in North America by Internet Retailer Magazine in 2011.

Yona is also an active angel investor and serves on several advisory boards to start-up companies. He acts as a mentor to entrepreneurs at Founder Fuel and Founders Institute (technology accelerators), is a board member of Startup Canada, and routinely lectures to college and university students on entrepreneurship. Yona is a frequent speaker at international marketing, startup, and technology conferences.

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Laurie Yoler

Board Director and Strategic Advisor, Zoox

Laurie Yoler

Board Director and Strategic Advisor, Zoox

Laurie Yoler is an experienced board director and strategist skilled in advising companies and founders in imagining, building, and scaling disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

She is known for taking a holistic, enterprise-wide view to quickly assess and shape technology into new, differentiated products and services. She is savvy in fundraising, M&A strategy, and negotiations, intellectual property strategy, and in devising complex, unconventional strategic alliances.

Yoler has served on the boards of public, private, and non-profit organizations. Most notably, she served as a Founding Board Member of Tesla Motors, serving on the board of directors from the earliest days, and on the board of advisors through taking the company public. She also served on the board of Interactive Investor International in London, through taking the company public, and until its acquisition by AMP Bank.

She currently serves on the board of directors of Bose, Church & Dwight (CHD), Zoox, Noon Home, and the Computer History Museum, and on the advisory boards of Accenture, Platform Science, Precise.ly, AI4All, and the Washington State Frank Fellows Entrepreneurship Program. She is also an active angel investor with Broadway Angels and HealthTech Capital.

Yoler has been an integral part of the development and launch of many new innovations and products, both from within large companies like Qualcomm, Visa, Sun Microsystems, and Accenture, and as one of a small group of founders/investors of a new entrepreneurial venture with a radical idea like Tesla Motors, DNA Direct, and Packet Design.

Most recently, Yoler was President of Qualcomm Labs and SVP of Business Development for Qualcomm, driving new internal innovation, and exploring and closing new strategic partnerships and joint ventures.

Yoler graduated summa cum laude from Washington State University with a bachelor’s degree in management information systems. She completed a semester in the international business program at the University of Copenhagen and later completed executive management programs at Kellogg, Stanford, and INSEAD.

Yoler has been very active in continuing her education at Stanford in board governance, biotechnology, biochemistry, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and geology.

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Chris Thomas

Co-Founder, Detroit Mobility Lab

Chris Thomas

Co-Founder, Detroit Mobility Lab

Chris is a Co-Founder of Detroit Mobility Lab and former Partner of Fontinalis. Prior to Fontinalis, he served in the U.S. Army as a Communications Officer in Iraq and the United States. Before joining the military, Chris worked as an Investment Banker at UBS within its Technology and Energy groups in New York and San Francisco.

Chris currently serves on the Board of Directors of one Fontinalis portfolio company, Karamba Security.

He previously sat on the Board of Directors of nuTonomy (acquired by Delphi in October 2017). He also currently serves as a Board Observer of four of Fontinalis’ portfolio companies: Ouster, Life360, SmartKargo, and SQLstream. Additionally, Chris serves on the Board of Directors of the Detroit Regional Chamber and as a Senior Advisor to the COMMIT Foundation. He is a member of both the Global Cleantech 100 expert panel and the Techweek Detroit Executive Advisory Board. He is also a Co-owner of Buddy's Pizza, the birthplace of original Detroit-style pizza, and an avid angel investor in the mobility space. Chris has previously served as the Chairman of Read to a Child, a national children’s literacy and mentoring nonprofit and as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Personal Transportation Systems.

Chris earned his Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Yale School of Management. While at Yale he served on the Honor Committee and graduated with distinction in former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s seminar on Faith and Globalization. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in both Economics and International Relations from Michigan State University. Chris is a resident of the City of Detroit and a staunch advocate of smart cities, early childhood literacy, and the doctrine of the strenuous life.

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Marc Weiser

Founder and Managing Director, RPM Ventures

Marc Weiser

Founder and Managing Director, RPM Ventures

Marc Weiser is Founder and Managing Director of RPM Ventures, a seed and early stage venture firm focused on investing in Enterprise Software & Marketplaces (emphasis on Insurance, Real Estate Tech, and Fintech) and has a specialty in the Automotive and Transportation sector.

He currently is on the boards of BountyJobs, a contingency recruiting marketplace; Mobi, a machine learning, multi-modal, dynamic route planning system for smart mobility; and Polysync, a platform for delivering safe and reliable autonomous vehicles.

Prior to forming RPM, Weiser was an internet and software entrepreneur. He co-founded QuantumShift and was an early employee at MessageMedia where he pioneered some of the original methods for e-commerce and helped lead the company’s IPO.

In addition to his board roles for RPM is a member the National Advisory Council, Science Committee for NASA and is on the board of the James Beard Foundation. He and his wife led the creation of the Mary H. Weiser Food Allergy Center at the University of Michigan. This Center provides national leadership in food allergy research and a path to a cure for those that suffer from food allergies.

Marc Weiser is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a BSE in aerospace engineering and a MBA.

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Edwin Olson

CEO, May Mobility

Edwin Olson

CEO, May Mobility

Edwin Olson is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan, and Co-founder/CEO of May Mobility, Inc., which develops self-driving shuttles.

He earned his PhD from MIT in 2008 for work in robot mapping. He has worked on autonomous vehicles for over a decade, including work on the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, vehicles for Ford and Toyota Research Institute, and now May Mobility.

His academic research includes work on perception, planning, and mapping. He was awarded a DARPA Young Faculty Award, named one of Popular Science's "Brilliant 10", and was winner of the 2010 MAGIC robotics competition.

He is perhaps best known for his work on AprilTags, SLAM using MaxMixtures and SGD, and Multi-Policy Decision Making.

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Tim Higgins

Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Tim Higgins

Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Tim Higgins is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering the future of cars. He focuses on electric cars, self-driving vehicles, and what traditional auto makers are doing in Silicon Valley. He previously reported on Apple and spent almost a decade in Detroit covering the automotive industry, which included reporting on the bankruptcy of General Motors and breakup of DaimlerChrysler. He can be found on Twitter @timkhiggins.

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Jim Scheinman

Managing Director, Maven Ventures

Jim Scheinman

Managing Director, Maven Ventures

Jim has achieved 5 ‘unicorn’-level successes over the past 20 years as a founder, executive, and investor. His top performers include Cruise ($1B sale to GM), Zoom ($1B valuation), Bebo ($850M sale to AOL), Tango ($1B+ valuation), and NBCi ($6B IPO). Jim is one of the leading growth experts in Silicon Valley, a TED speaker, and a frequent presenter and judge at many startup conferences and events. Jim has a BS in Neuropsychology from Duke University and earned a JD at the University of California Davis School of Law. Jim has startup in his blood. He’s been a serial entrepreneur dating back to his high school and college days.

Immediately prior to founding Maven Ventures, Jim was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Charles River Ventures (CRV), a leading venture firm where he helped source, vet, and advise their consumer portfolio companies. Jim is one of the early pioneers of the social networking phenomenon as one of the first employees and the former head of business development and sales at the first social networking site, Friendster. In 2005, Jim left Friendster to join co-founders Michael and Xochi Birch to launch Bebo as the first employee and Board member. Prior to his internet career, Jim practiced corporate and intellectual property law at a leading Silicon Valley law firm for 3 years.

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Alex Davies

Transportation Editor, WIRED Magazine

Alex Davies

Transportation Editor, WIRED Magazine

Alex Davies manages, edits, and writes for WIRED's transportation section, whose launch he oversaw in January 2016. His work focuses primarily on autonomous vehicles, but he and his team cover everything in this fast-changing space, from street design to infrastructure funding to the science of the presidential motorcade.

He wrote WIRED's February 2016 cover story about how General Motors beat Tesla in the race to build the affordable, long-range electric car, and is writing a book about the origin and evolution of the self-driving car industry, to be published by Simon & Schuster.

Before joining WIRED in May 2014, Alex was a reporter for Business Insider. A New York native and a graduate of Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota, he lives in Berkeley and has learned to love taking the bus to work.